Education

Dr.Barker received her BA, Honours Psychology, from Nipissing University, inOntario, MA in Developmental Psychology from the University of Victoria, inBritish Columbia, and PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University ofAlberta. She completed post-doctoral fellowships at the US National Institutesof Health and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She joined the Department ofPsychology at Concordia University in 2011.

Research

Dr. Barker directs the Lifespan Well-BeingLaboratory. Her area of expertise is stress, coping, and well-being. She hastwo lines of research. First she studies how young people cope with stressencountered during the transition from adolescence to early adulthood and howtheir stress and coping impacts their wellbeing and mental health. Secondshe studies how parents of children withspecial needs cope with exceptional caregiving challenges and how their stressand coping impacts their physical, mental, and relational well-being.